By now I am sure you have noticed I am a bit capricious in my literary fervor. I happily vacillate between the serious* and the popular. There is, I believe, a very important place for both. “Twilight” falls into the latter category and I am willing to lay my credibility on the line with my swooning enthusiasm for this book.
As with the response to Harry Potter, there are many people who embrace the wildly enthusiastic opinion of the masses and many who remain sceptical because it is mainstream. I love Harry Potter and have been seriously rankled by the comments of a few people who dislike the books and dimiss them as commercial twaddle.
“Twilight” is not twaddle, although it is hugely popular. There are four books and a soon-to-be released movie. Vampires, werewolves and teenagers are a very tumultuously romantic and natural fit.
“Twilight” is not an adult book, but I don’t see why not. It has all the angst and romantic power of a grown-up situation. Bella, a 17-year-old from Phoenix has moved back to deep, dark, rainy Forks, Wash., to live with her father. She has no interest in either boys or high school’s popularity games. She reads “Macbeth” and prefers classical music. She loves her beat-up truck and eschews the typical teenage girls’ dramas.
Edward Cullen and his family also eschew the normal for different reasons. They also are well-educated, insightful, compassionate and unconcerned with the mundane.
Edward and Bella’s romance is new for both of them. As their love changes, so do they. Edward has been 17 for a very long time and, in Bella, he finds something he can neither resist nor live without.
Bella is older than her 17 years in a different, but equally disparate way. As with great romances, we are encapsulated in their private world and the suddenly immaterial milieu in which they orbit.
Bella’s world may have become Edward, but that world is increasingly exotic and deadly.
Edward is a vampire.
Not a pedestrian vampire, but a creature who is wholly deserving of her love.
Why are we not supposed to love these books? Should we be embarrassed to remember that heady lasciviousness that young hormones usher in? Who in their right mind wants to forget that feeling? Edward is that feeling.
Edward is mesmerizing and both Bella and the reader fall prey. “Twilight” is a juggernaut of activity and visceral emotion. It was with great disappointment that I left the Lyme Library yesterday upon finding its sequel “New Moon” already checked out. After that, I will snatch up “Eclipse”, “Breaking Dawn” and “Midnight Sun.” Each thankfully large and chock-full of promise.
Twaddle or Solzhenitsyn – I do not give a hoot. I love them and am counting the days until I can reenter the world that Stephenie Meyer has created … and I don’t care who knows it.
* Who is to say which is which anyhow? Reading Shakespeare makes people say, “Oooo”, but it is just older popular material.